


Nightlights

by basilique



Category: Carmilla (Web Series), Carmilla - All Media Types
Genre: Broody Carmilla, Carmilla adapts to being human again, Depression, Domestic, Emotions, F/F, Human Carmilla Karnstein, Post-Series, Post-Silas, Processing the Past, Recovery, Soul-Searching, Supportive Carmilla, Supportive Laura, supportive girlfriends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 05:07:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12697974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basilique/pseuds/basilique
Summary: Carmilla is overwhelmed by how it feels to be human again, and she falls into a depression. Laura struggles to help her.





	Nightlights

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning: Brief reference to gun violence (an article about a mass shooting that Laura reads in the newspaper)

For nine days, Carmilla lies on the bedroom floor. 

On the tenth, she gets up and makes herself some pasta. 

Laura, hearing the sound of a pot being set down on a burner and the click of the lighting gas stove, feels a tender relief. _She’s up, and she’s eating something._

Cold air seeps through the caulking of the windowframe beside the couch, where Laura sits with her laptop. The small yard outside is bleak; dead yellow grass covered in a powder of November snow. The sky is gray and the sunlight makes everything too clear and too cold to look at for long. 

But the News, on her laptop screen, is no better. There has been another mass shooting, and Laura’s head feels too full. She just can’t take any more sadness. 

But at least Carmilla is up. 

Laura lifts the laptop and blankets off her lap, and goes to the kitchen. 

“Hi.” She wraps her arms around Carmilla’s waist from behind. 

“Hi beautiful.” Carmilla tilts her head back for a moment to rest it against Laura’s forehead. 

“Feeling a little better?” Laura tries to keep her voice light, to hide the real depth of her worry. For more than a week, Carmilla has barely moved at all. Laura has been bringing her food and water, sitting and cuddling with her, reading to her, coaxing her into getting up to use the bathroom or shower. 

“A little, yeah.” 

“Fantastic.” Laura leans in to kiss Carmilla’s temple. 

She reaches up and tugs aside the curtain that covers the little square window over the stove. At once, Carmilla flinches back and raises a hand to her face as the sunlight hits her. 

"Sorry!" Laura snaps the curtain closed again quickly. "I should have warned you." 

"It's okay." Carmilla shakes her head a little and goes back to stirring the bubbling pot of pasta. "It just still sometimes takes me a second to remember...you know. That I'm alive and it doesn't matter if I stand in the sun." 

"Yeah," Laura says. She kisses Carmilla on the temple again. "Nobody could just bounce back to it, after centuries of darkness."


End file.
